July 11, 2017

Mini in the Mail #70: "Rooftops of Le Cure"

"Rooftops of Le Cure," 5x5in., oil on masonite

I don't always have a strong reason for painting something, other than a certain spot, object, or condition of light made an impression and stuck, and generated in me the need to regurgitate it back out on a 2D plane.

This is a typical view of the neighbourhood in Florence in which I lived last year and recently had the chance to revisit.

And this is an excerpt from Timothy Steele's 1986 poem "Rooftop," which meshes nicely:

The roof shows other rooftops, their plateaus
Marked with antennas from which lines are tied
And strung with water beads or hung with clothes.
And here and there a pigeon comes to peck
At opaque puddles, its stiff walk supplied
By herky-jerky motions of its neck...

And it's as if the roofs' breeze-freshened shelves
...are themselves
A measure of the intermediate worth
Of all the stories to the morning star
And all the stories to the morning earth.